


this jake fella: on Jake English's accent

by bramblePatch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from Bramblepatch Blog, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Meta Essay, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 16:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: Originally posted on my Tumblr November 2014, in response to the question:ok but jake and jade have the last name English and Jake uses old-fashioned slang constantly in the same way american s do when poking fun at english people. How can he not have an english accent? And an annoying posh one at that.





	this jake fella: on Jake English's accent

Jake isn’t using that slang to “poke fun” at anything, he uses it because, from a fairly young age, almost every instance of spoken language that he heard (up to the point where he may or may not have begun voice chatting with the other alpha kids) was from movies, and his movie collection probably would have _started_ with films that his grandmother shared with him - and she grew up in America in the nineteen teens and twenties. Jake speaks old-timey movie speak as a first language, and has subsequently been influenced by cinema from every era up to 2011. He _doesn’t_ have extensive exposure to natural, conversational English. Maybe my assertion that he switches frequently between distinct accents was a little cartoonish, but he certainly has a somewhat antiquated manner of speech, and I very much doubt that he has an accent that’s consistent with any existing regional accent. He definitely would _not_ have an upper-class british accent, except possibly in the case of a few phrases or words which he has only ever heard from movie characters with such an accent.

Jade English may or may not have spent time in Great Britain, but she chose her name based on anecdotal knowledge of an entity who had almost certainly _never_ had anything to do with the country of England. Rather, in this context “English” is a billards/pool term, referring to a method of placing a spin on the cue ball so that it does not roll in a straight line, and thus serves to thematically tie Lord English to the rest of the Felt and to indicate his unpredictability.

Jake doesn’t use British slang, he uses American slang from the Roaring Twenties. The Felt Intermission, and characters and plotlines associated with it (most notably the continued existence and relevance of Spades Slick), have a heavy (if heavily tongue-in-cheek, this is Homestuck, after all) Film Noir atmosphere - an association inherited from Problem Sleuth. If you write either of the Hellmurder Island kids or their grandparents, I’d recommend familiarizing yourself with early American film to some extent, particularly early talkies and the noir genre.


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